Malice kac-19

by Robert K. Tanenbaum

  "Did you wait to make sure no one got out?" Kellagh asked.

  "I threw the bottle so it landed right in front of the door," the other man replied. "There are no other doors and it will go up like a torch. You sent me there to buy a book yesterday and even without gasoline that place was just waiting for a match."

  "You didn't wait to make sure the job was accomplished?" Kellagh asked calmly but in a tone that made the man tremble with fear.

  "Do you want me to go back?"

  "No," Kellagh said. "That's what I get for sending an idiot to do a man's job. I'll go have a look. And you better be here when I get back."

  Inside the bookstore, Lucy and Magee ran to the other basement-level window. Lucy looked at the narrow opening with dismay. She knew that she might fit through it, but Cian never would.

  "You first," he yelled to her. The flames were already spreading into the living room and the smoke was so thick she could only see a couple of feet. "But here, take this, I wanted you to have it anyway. Wear it for me someday, a ghra mo chroi, when that cowboy comes to his senses and marries you." He pressed something into her hand that she put in her pocket without thinking.

  Magee knitted his fingers together to create a step for Lucy to place her foot. "Up you go," he grunted as he lifted her to the window. Smoke was already billowing from the opening and she coughed and gagged, trying to claw her way out. She felt herself getting weak, but then two hands grabbed her by her forearms and pulled her forward.

  Collapsing on the ground outside of the window, she looked up. Jaxon stood there with smoke swirling around him. He looked angry and she shrunk away when he extended his hand to help her up. Instead, she pointed back at the window. "Help, Cian!" she pleaded.

  Jaxon turned and rushed back into the smoke. Lucy heard Cian screaming in pain and terror. Retching, she got back on her feet just as Jaxon staggered out. He grabbed her and wouldn't let her get closer to the fire.

  "I couldn't get him out," he said. "I'm sorry, Lucy, the window is too small."

  As if to confirm that, there was a last wailing cry of a frightened, dying animal. Then there was only the sound of the fire, the shouts of people on the street and people poking their heads out of apartment windows, and the far-off cry of a siren.

  Lucy tried again to push past Jaxon, but he held her. "Let me go!" she cried. "I have to help him."

  "It's too late, Lucy," he yelled. "Cian's gone. We have to get back, this whole building is going to go."

  Jaxon led Lucy across the street, where she sat down on the curb and started to cry. "I killed him," she wailed.

  "No, you didn't," Jaxon said. "You didn't start that fire."

  "You don't understand," Lucy wailed. "They killed him because of that poem and what he discovered." She looked up, her eyes wild with suspicion. "Where have you been, Espey? You were late."

  Jaxon hung his head. "I wasn't responsible for this, Lucy. And I swear to you that I will do everything I can to catch and punish whoever was."

  Lucy seemed to weigh what he said. At last she nodded. "For Cian's sake, nar laga Dia do lamh."

  Jaxon's brow furrowed. "I'm sorry, I-"

  "It's an old Irish blessing," Lucy interjected, "and means 'May God not weaken your hand.'" She reached in her pocket and pulled out the object Cian had given her, knowing that it was his mother's ring. She put it on her finger and started to sob.

  14

  The quiet tapping of the stenographer's machine stopped as Richie Meyers checked his notes. The others in the room-Marlene Ciampi, Mikey O'Toole, Kip Huttington, and Clyde Barnhill-remained silent, like actors at a rehearsal waiting to deliver their lines. They were an hour into the deposition of Huttington, the first half covering O'Toole's history at the university, including his success and standing in the community, before moving onto the allegations that resulted in the ACAA hearing and suspension. But now Meyers was ready to delve into the heart of the lawsuit.

  "Mr. Huttington, were you asked by Coach O'Toole for a public name-clearing hearing at the university following his suspension by the ACAA?" he asked as the court reporter resumed tapping away.

  Huttington glanced at his attorney, Barnhill, who nodded.

  "Yes, I was," the university president answered.

  "And what was your reply?"

  "Objection to the form of the question," Barnhill said. "President Huttington is a representative of the university; any reply was officially that of the university."

  Meyers gave Barnhill an "are you serious" look. The university attorney had been a pain in the ass throughout the deposition-frequently objecting or touching Huttington on the arm to indicate he wanted to confer before answering the most mundane questions.

  "Okay, then," Meyers sighed. "What was the university's official reply through its representative President Huttington when Coach O'Toole asked for a name-clearing hearing at the university?"

  Huttington looked at Barnhill, who indicated that they should once again turn away from the others and discuss his answer. When the pair had their backs to him, Meyers rolled his eyes at O'Toole and Marlene. They both smiled and shook their heads; even the court reporter put a hand to her mouth to stifle a giggle.

  The deposition was taking place in a meeting room next to Huttington's office at the University of Northwestern Idaho in Sawtooth. Meyers could have demanded that the university representatives come to his office, but given the cramped quarters there, he'd agreed to meet at the university. "Besides," he said, "I think it was enough of a shock when I filed notice that Butch Karp, who just happens to be the district attorney of New York, would be co-counsel. Barnhill even had his secretary call to confirm that I was talking about the Butch Karp."

  Huttington and Barnhill turned back to the table and faced the court reporter. "The university denied the request," the president replied.

  "For what reason?" Meyers shot back.

  Apparently, Barnhill had anticipated the question and rehearsed it with Huttington, because he didn't bother to stop him from answering right away. "The university is a member of the American Collegiate Athletic Association and as such is subject to its rules and regulations," Huttington replied. "The ACAA conducted a hearing at which Coach O'Toole was given the opportunity to give his statement; the association then made its decision. The university as an entity was not obligated to provide Coach O'Toole a second forum, and we saw no good purpose-wanting only to get this business behind us for the university's sake, as well as Coach O'Toole's sake."

  "You refused to give me a chance to prove that the charges against me were false so that I could clear my name for my sake?" said O'Toole incredulously.

  "Sorry, Coach, but we will all have to move on with our lives," Huttington replied. He addressed the rest of what he had to say to the court reporter, as if he needed to explain his reasoning to her and no one else. "Coach O'Toole made a dreadful mistake. But one bad act does not make him a bad man. I wish him the best in his future endeavors."

  "Gee, thanks for the vote of confidence," O'Toole said before Meyers could silence him with a look.

  "There was no 'good purpose' in allowing him to present his side publicly?" Meyers said to head off any more of his client's remarks.

  "Asked and answered," Barnhill replied before Huttington could say anything.

  Marlene stifled the impulse to shake her head and say something. She had to remind herself that she'd been introduced as a plaintiff's investigator and was only there to observe.

  When Meyers called in early January to tell Butch that he would be deposing Huttington, Marlene had decided to fly out to get acquainted with the players and help with interviews and any loose ends that needed to be tied up.

  As much as anything, she just wanted to get out of Manhattan. The murder of Cian Magee had cast a pall over the holiday season. Other than the twins' usual orgy of overdosing on e-presents and other holiday treats, the celebrations had been quiet and contemplative.

  Jaxon had taken Lucy to the hospital after th
e fire, where she was given a mild sedative and treated for burns to her legs. Because of the tears and the drugs, it had been difficult to get the full story from her when Marlene and Butch arrived. Only when she fell asleep was Jaxon able to fill them in on the details such as he knew them. "Which isn't much."

  However, it wasn't until Lucy was released and returned to the loft that they heard about the Sons of Man book and its relation to the tape recording Jaxon had asked her to translate. Even then, it all sounded too incredible-a clandestine group of smugglers from a remote island in the Irish Sea who'd immigrated to America and established a crime empire?

  "That borders on The Da Vinci Code fantastic," Marlene remarked.

  Almost as disturbing as the story was Lucy's attitude around Jaxon when he visited the loft to see how she was doing. Marlene noticed Lucy's reticence around him and several times saw her daughter giving him sideways glances, as if weighing something. But Lucy didn't say anything and Marlene chalked it up to shock and grief.

  When she got a moment alone with Jaxon, Marlene asked if he'd noticed anything about Lucy's mood since the attack.

  "You mean toward me? And yes, I've noticed," Jaxon acknowledged. "I was the one who got her and Cian into this. Then I was late getting to Cian's apartment. I was…looking for someone, and it took longer than I thought it would. Lucy hasn't said as much, but I think she blames me. And to be honest, I blame myself, too."

  The death of Cian Magee had been front-page news for all of a day. The attack was obviously a homicide and arson, but the police had no suspects or a motive.

  Jaxon had "pulled some strings" and kept Lucy's name out of the press, but it hardly mattered. The media could not be bothered with the death of a bookstore owner and the story had died soon after.

  Lucy had stayed in New York until Christmas day. After the presents were opened and a quiet Christmas dinner was picked at halfheartedly, she caught a taxi to LaGuardia and left for New Mexico to be with her cowboy.

  Now it was January, the twins were back in school, and Butch was preoccupied with the bombing at the Black Sea Cafe and his obsession with the murder of the schoolchildren during Andrew Kane's escape. Going to Idaho seemed like a great way for Marlene to escape herself.

  Marlene had been picked up in an old sedan at Boise Airport by two of O'Toole's players from the baseball team, Clancy Len and Tashaun Willis. The young black athletes had then wasted no time driving her north out of the city on a highway that within a few miles was climbing steadily into the snow-covered mountains.

  Initially the land they drove through appeared to be barren-given over to rocks, brush, and stunted juniper trees. But as the road climbed in elevation, the increasingly steep hillsides were covered by a dense forest of pines and firs. "Over on the right is the Payette River," Willis said, indicating the mostly iced-over water in the deep gorge to her right. "It doesn't look like much of a river now, and I know that where you're from, the rivers are big, deep, and muddy, but come spring runoff from the snow and the Payette will be raging."

  The higher they climbed, the windier the road became, but it didn't slow Len down much. Marlene, who was no stranger to wild rides, nevertheless clutched the door handle nervously as the old sedan swung around blind corners and skirted sudden precipices. Here and there, patches of snow and ice could be seen on the pavement. To take her mind off thoughts of plunging off the highway and into the river, Marlene asked her escorts their opinion of Coach O'Toole.

  "He's the best," Len said. "There wasn't a lot of incentive for me to do well academically in high school. Where I come from on the South Side of Chicago, not a lot of kids go on to college. Those who try hard in school get a bunch of shit from the gangbangers for being 'too good for the hood,' so most just give up. I have to admit, the only reason I wanted to go to college was to play baseball until I could get noticed by a pro scout, only my grades weren't good enough to let me attend a big school. But Coach O'Toole gave me a chance, and when I got here, he found me a tutor so that I could catch up. Now, I'm straight As."

  "Still planning on a baseball career?" Marlene asked.

  Len took a moment to answer. "Some dreams die hard, and after I graduate, if I don't get drafted, I might try to walk on with some team, just so I can say I gave it my best shot. But I'm not counting on it anymore. Someday, baseball or not, I want to be a teacher…just as long as I can make enough money to save my little sister, Tanya, from the South Side."

  "What about you, Tashaun?" Marlene asked. "Where are you from?"

  "Believe it or not, right here in Idaho," Willis answered. "There ain't many of us brothers around here, but my father was in the air force, based out of Mountain Home Air Force Base down the interstate some from Boise. He was from Mississippi originally, but fell in love with this place and decided to stay."

  "He still here?" Marlene asked, hoping she didn't sound nervous as the car swung around a corner just a few yards from the drop-off that plunged down to the river.

  "Yep, he and my mom, two brothers, and a sister," Willis replied. "He retired from the air force and teaches computer science at Boise Community College."

  "And what about your baseball dreams?" Marlene asked.

  Willis laughed. "Hell, I can't hardly get off the pine with the team we got here," he said. "No, I'm a realist. I love the game, but after college, it's going to be softball leagues for me. I want to be a teacher, too, and maybe I can coach a little."

  The group rode along in silence for a couple of minutes until Marlene asked, "What about these accusations against Coach O'Toole?"

  "They're bullshit," Len exclaimed, "'scuse my language, ma'am."

  "Forget about it," she replied. "I hear worse from my adolescent sons on an hourly basis, though I do appreciate your manners."

  "Anyway, it's all a bunch of lies," Len added, "made up by Rufus Porter. He's the one that's stirred this all up because he got kicked off the team. It's a damn shame what they've done to Coach O'Toole; the university and the ACAA ought to be ashamed of themselves. I hope he wins his lawsuit for more money than they got."

  Marlene caught the hitch of emotion in Len's voice. O'Toole's players love him. Just like his brother, she thought. I remember from the funeral how devastated his former players were. She was about to comment on that when Len, who was looking in the rearview mirror, spoke.

  "Looks like we got some crackers for company."

  A few seconds later, a big Ford pickup truck roared up alongside the sedan. Inside were three young men, all as bald as billiard balls. Two sat in the front seat but the third was leaning out of the cab window, pantomiming pumping a shell into the chamber of a shotgun. He aimed the imaginary weapon at Len and pulled the imaginary trigger, laughing as he looked back at his companions.

  The two cars went around a blind corner and the faces of the three young men changed from laughter to panic. A semitruck bearing a load of timber was coming head-on from the other direction, and they were seconds from being obliterated. The driver of the pickup gunned the engine and swerved in front of the sedan just in time to avoid being crushed. For a moment, the pickup remained in front, as if the driver was recovering his wits, and then it rocketed off ahead.

  "Speak of the devil," Willis said with disgust. "That clown leaning out the window was good ol' Rufus Porter himself, and those were some of his Aryan nation friends. That timber truck almost did the world a favor."

  A few miles farther, Len turned off onto another two-lane highway and headed northeast. They'd gone about twenty more miles, much of it paralleling a railroad track, when they passed a gravel road with a gated entrance and guard station. No people were visible, but they could see the Ford truck pulled off the road on the other side of the gate.

  "That's the property of the Unified Church of the Aryan People," Len said contemptuously. "As you can see, our friends are the religious types."

  Another ten miles brought them to the town of Sawtooth, which, Marlene noted, had managed to retain at least some of its hist
ory. The entrance to Main Street was dominated by a tall wood-sided building that proclaimed in big white letters on a red background to be the Sawtooth Mercantile and Livestock Feed Store. Across the street was a saloon called the Cowboy Bar; as if on cue, two young men in ten-gallon hats and cowboy boots sauntered out.

  "I love it here," Len added. "I hope to live here someday. The air is clean, the water doesn't smell like the sewer, and for the most part, people treat you the same way you treat them. That's one of the things that Coach O'Toole emphasized to all of us players: Be good members of the community if you want to be considered part of the community."

  "Sounds a lot like his brother," Marlene replied. "How much farther to Coach O'Toole's house?"

  Willis pointed to a small mountain that rose beyond the town. "About a half hour," he said. "Coach lives up there, past the university campus."

  As predicted, a half hour later, the group arrived at the entry of a long driveway that led to a large log home where smoke was curling up from the chimney. A pair of curious horses watched them from a snowy pasture as they rolled up to the house. Tall, red-haired Mikey O'Toole and his attorney, Richie Meyers, were waiting on the wide porch.

  "I hope my two young friends here didn't show you too wild a time," O'Toole shouted as he walked down the wide steps to embrace Marlene. "Clancy is a city boy, but he seems to have lost all inhibitions about driving fast on our treacherous mountain roads. He's the Mario Andretti of the University of Northwestern Idaho."

  "Please, coach, maybe 'the Wendell Scott,' at least he was a brother," Len said, laughing. "But don't worry, Coach, I took it easy on her. We did have one small run-in with some of our friends from the Unified Church of Racists and Morons, including favorite son Rufus Porter."

  O'Toole shook his head and apologized. "Sorry, Marlene, they really are in the minority, but our Aryan neighbors do like to make themselves stick out like sore thumbs."